Renee Fleming Quotes - Page 3

No voice teacher can be all things to all people. You have to gain information from whatever sources you can. You have to listen.

I want to keep my voice young, with nothing heavy.

A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.

I think singing is one of the most natural things that human beings do, but it's difficult.

My parents discussed singing every night over the dinner table; I had a tremendous music education.

I'm not a reactionary.

My mother was the worst kind of stage mother. She would make me and my younger sister and brother little duckling costumes and put us in kiddie shows.

The first thing I did when I made a little bit of money as a singer was to buy myself an amber necklace. This is often the way we put together our lives, adding the striking qualities of others into our own character.

One of my timesaving habits is to save all of my magazines and junk mail for airplane trips. I walk on the plane with a very heavy bundle, but by the time the trip is over, it can all be thrown away.

I'm reserved, so I've always needed to find a way of opening up. Jazz helped me do that.

I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic.

I think singing it when its done well is extremely natural. It feels great.

I'm not exactly an angry young person.

Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc.

I have a certain image that's more classic, and I'm happy to stay out of the fray.

I have had a very difficult time with stage fright; it undermines your well-being and peace of mind, and it can also threaten your livelihood.

You finally have to learn to pull all the different kinds of teaching and training and coaching together on you own, so that your voice and body and technique for a sound that is consistent and solid.

I do everything in the third person. Performance is about being someone else.

Having to travel so much plays havoc with your personal life.

For years, I had no time for exploratory travel.

Singers can also get away with a lot based on youth, strength and enthusiasm, only to find ten years later that what was once just a niggling problem has brought their careers to an end.

For my own singing, I used to be attracted by the baroque, the flashier the better, but now I prefer a simpler, purer style.

For a while it was hard for me to say no to work.

If I have to hold a note for a long time, I imagine it as moving and spinning, for the note has to have life. In a way, a singer actually refreshes a note with every beat that it's held.

My whole career I played these girls sort of 18 to 23.